Thursday, June 26, 2014

Kate and Virgil Boyles,The Homesteaders (1909)

Brother and sister writing team, Kate and
Virgil Boyles, followed their first novel Langford
of the Three Bars (1907) with this one, both set on the South Dakota prairie
near the Missouri River. The homesteaders of the title are also a brother and
sister, Josephine and Jack Carroll.

It’s the early 1890s, and their story
concerns their difficulties as newcomers from the South, invading the open
grazing lands of a nearby ranch, the 7-Up, whose foreman, Tom Burrington, takes
an interest in them and falls in love with Josephine.

Plot. The central conflict in the novel
involves a villainous troublemaker, LaDue, who lives on a wooded island in the
river and cuts timber, as well as operating a ferry crossing. He takes a
dislike to the Carrolls and tries to drive them away, stealing a cow and a calf
and then hiring a Texas cowboy, Henry Hoffman, to shoot Josephine as she brings
her brother’s small herd of cows in from pasture for the night.Tom comes on the scene in time to prevent any
harm to her, but later, Jack himself is shot and killed while sitting in the
doorway of his cabin. As Josephine rides to town for help, she is pursued by
the same Henry Hoffman. Waiting off the trail, she takes a shot at him herself
before Tom Burrington comes once again to her rescue.

Josephine and Tom

Romance. Tom’s feelings for Josephine are in early
evidence in the novel. Aware that she is in some danger as long as she lives on
her brother’s isolated homestead, he is overcome with concern for her and yields
to a rush of emotions, kissing her hands as he stands beside the horse she is riding.

Josephine is oddly reserved in his
presence, though both she and Jack have owed their lives to him. In an early
chapter, he found Jack with a broken leg and freezing in a winter storm. He
also rescued Josephine from drowning after she fell through ice on the river.

However, she believes she has reason to distrust him and his honor as a
gentleman. When she thinks he is withholding important information from her and
her brother about their safety, she suspects Tom of disloyalty to them as
fellow members of the same high-born class.

Tom

Character. Meanwhile, we know that Tom Burrington is
not only of exemplary character. He is expert in the skills that make him a top
hand. At a Wild West celebration near the Lower Brulé Agency, he is persuaded
to enter a roping competition despite his protests that he is out of practice
and wagerers will lose any money bet on his beating a champion roper from
another ranch.

But even though LaDue tampers with his saddle rigging, causing a
fall, he beats the other rider by two seconds on a second try and wins the
event. He’s not your average cowboy. At novel’s end, Tom is also the bringer of
justice as he confronts LaDue, gets a confession from him, and in an exchange
of gunfire, Ladue is killed.

All that remains is for Tom to win over Josephine,
who continues to mourn the death of her brother, an “uncanonized martyr to
civilization,” while without good reason, she holds Tom responsible for his death. After Jack’s body is taken back East for
burial, she returns to the homestead and is joined there by a mixed-blood
Dakota Indian woman, Onjijitka (Rosebud), who has promised to be a “husband” to
her, helping with the fieldwork and the livestock.

Rosebud and Josephine

A curious invention, Rosebud
has been to school where she has learned white ways: to read and write, sing
and dance, embroider, play piano, and wear a corset. Despite her hopes, these
have not won her acceptance as a white woman, which has left her embittered by white
racial prejudice.

Though Tom confesses his love to
Josephine, she is determined to be an independent homesteader, finishing what
her brother started. When Tom objects to the two women living alone to work the
homestead, he says he will return in eight months to ask for Josephine’s hand
in marriage. She replies coyly, “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

It’s a curious ending for a western story
where a handsome cowboy is left empty-handed despite his best efforts to win
the heart of the girl he loves. But sometimes on the frontier a young woman’s
priorities must prevail, and romance has to wait its turn.

Tom and LaDue

Now that the
villains are either dead or doing time, there is peace in the valley, and
having learned how to use a gun and ride astride a horse, a woman, or two women
in this case, don’t need a man around for either protection or company.

Wrapping up.Kate and
Virgil Boyles grew up in Yankton, South Dakota, their father a prominent
lawyer, judge and territorial legislator. After education at Yankton College,
they collaborated as writers of five novels, all of them set on the South
Dakota frontier. As a court reporter and trained in the law, Virgil provided
the legal groundwork for their collaborations, but there is evidence that Kate
was the main author of the novels they produced together.